While Cumberbatch would be EXCELLENT (I could imagine him kind of like Tom Baker's creepy, alienated son), I suspect it is unlikely. How about this guy - he held his own well in Terra Nova and the shortlived U.S. reboot of Life on Mars. While he tends to shed his accent for roles in the U.S., he is actually Irish.

I thought the same, until I got hungry and ate at a Huddle House. And I realized that no matter how much Waffle House may FEEL like hitting bottom, there is still farther to fall.

Your sense of irony is showing some promise.

Fancy is relative. In this case, relative to Huddle House.

You are unjustly leaving out Huddle House, which is the low-rent competitor of Waffle House (fancy people in the South go to Waffle House; poor people, cretins and methheads go to Huddle House for their undercooked fried eggs and greasy, floppy bacon).

I remember Steve Martin doing a particularly amusing Thanksgiving routine sometime in the early 80s on things that he was thankful for. One was something like "I am thankful for the Atlantic Ocean, because otherwise all of these Portuguese people would be just be able to WALK into our country."

Agreed.

Love the "good for teething babies" aspects. A colleague from Ghana told me once that pharmacies there sold tiny bottles of something called "gripe water" which was used to soothe a teething or colicky child. When she investigated a little, it turned out to be a wee shot of highly-refined alcohol, like vodka.

My flow chart for my most recent vehicle purchase looked like this:

The main thing that annoyed me is the politics of the whole Secret Dreadnaught thing. Even assuming it could be done, WHY would a senior admiral go to the time and expense of concealing a huge, fearsome, and otherwise entirely cool battleship and then give it a really evil name like Vengeance and paint it all black,…

Douglas Adams, himself a great Dr. Who writer back in the Tom Baker era, wrestled with this very problem with the ever-expanding character of Zaphod Beeblebrox, who took an ever-greater role in the insane original radio version of Hitchhiker's Guide as Adams was writing it on the fly episode after episode. The only…

Oh, come on - you just know that every struck-out batter in history was thinking EXACTLY this.

You should not, ever, just quit showing up with a major project due within a week of the scheduled end of your internship. Seriously - this is a very bad way to proceed. I know. Someone actually did this to my company once. He didn't get a whole bunch of recommendations outta that one.

I will not be happy until these devices can print steaming hot cups of coffee and delicious meals, like Star Trek.

The price vs. taste line is not straight, it is curved - severely. The difference between an $8 bottle of Cab and a $12 bottle, for example, is far greater than the difference between a $50 and a $100 one. And the line isn't even always upward - I was on a tasting panel once where a $50 bottle of wine from a little…

This was an excellent and affecting story, but I must say I stand in awe of the following sentence, which by itself makes the entire super-long piece worth the read:

Curiously, researchers also found that neolithic teenagers used the word "Awesome" though it is not clear that it meant the same thing.

I know the German military vehicles were made by Volkwagen, but were they the same engine design as the Bug?

I have never tried to use a classic VW bug as a combat vehicle, but as I recall, the fuel line placement gave them a very unfortunate tendency to catch fire at random moments (I know two people who have had their classic Bugs simply burst into flame thanks to leaky fuel lines - no accident, no previous obvious damage,…

Hm. Perhaps I will go home and attempt to ingest my favorite mind altering substance with my genitals too. My wife will wonder why I am dipping my member in a mug of beer rather than just drinking the liquid with my lips as usual. But it could be a potentially interesting starting point for a conversation.